Since the sun was shining from a clear blue sky this morning, me, Rohny, Markus and Morten decided to pack up the car and go to Altevatn for an action-packed day of waterskiing, wakeboarding and tubing. Since my achilles is still acting up, I decided not to provoke it even more by trying the waterskiing or wakeboarding, but went for a couple of tube-rides instead. What a RUSH!
The experience started with a sort-of somersault into the water (which wasn’t exactly within my comfort-level of temperature), and then mounting the tube in the water. Hard enough, with a wetsuit that has already sucked up enough water to make you 5kg heavier, but it worked. Finally sitting well in place in the tube, which was almost like the tube of a truck-tire, only with a net covering the hole in the middle and two handles on the sides (trust me, doing 35 knots on that thing, you’re hanging on to those handles for all you’re worth), I gave the go-ahead to the guys in the boat with a thumbs-up.
The boat is picking up speed, the tube is picking up speed, and I’m finding myself thinking “what the h*ll was I thinking, this is bloody dangerous!”. I forgot to mention that for the people in the boat, the whole idea of tubing is to make the tube go as fast as possible, doing as many crazy turns as possible, so they can laugh their asses of when the person in the tube wipes out.. With me in the tube, they got their laughs.. They didn’t even have the courtesy of stopping laughing when I hauled my beat-up body out of the water after two trips and two major wipe-outs back into the boat.
The first run was the worst, so I’ll try to quickly give you an idea of how it felt:
The speed increases to a level where it suddenly dawns on you; falling off this thing is gonna hurt! So when the guys in the boat starts doing their crazy manouvers at 35 knots to get you to fall off, you do everything you can to avoid that inevitable ending; shifting bodyweight to make sure you don’t fall over in sharp turns, hanging on to the handles for dear life to avoid leaving the tube as it makes a jump on a wave, and generally trying to remember that if (or rather; when) you fall off, to keep your arms close to your body (hey, at least they had _some_ concern for my safety)… Oh, guess I forgot to mention the warning written on the tube saying “don’t exceed 20 knots”. Anyway, after what feels like an hour, but in reality is more like 1 minute, your arms and other muscles starts hurting and burning, and it’s getting harder and harder to stay on, but you’re still on there riding the tube like a big old bull – until you hit the big wave… the wave your “buddies” set you up to hit when doing a mean turn in high speeds. Your brain goes “this can’t be good”, your only thought is “will I survive this?”, and your body decides to take a swift turn in the opposite direction of the tube.
Did it hurt? I have no idea, I was so pumped up on adrenaline that I can hardly even remember hitting the water surface. The only thing I can remember is that my first words when resurfacing, coughing and spitting water, were “that was f*cking grrrrreeeaaat!!”
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